The Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Music at BU School of Music is for students who desire a broad liberal arts education while exploring music without a strict focus in performance, composition and theory, or music education. The major prepares students for graduate work and academic careers in musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and composition, and for professional careers in music criticism, music librarianship, music publishing, arts management, and other wide-ranging areas of the music and arts industry.

The BA in Music with a concentration in Global Music Studies provides students with opportunities to study music in a global context from a variety of disciplinary approaches, including performance, ethnomusicology, and music theory and analysis.

The Musicology & Ethnomusicology program at BU is led by a vibrant, active, diverse, supportive, and inclusive Department, dedicated to a shared purpose and a field without walls between scholarship and performance. Faculty expertise runs the gamut from the Middle Ages to popular music, from Indonesia to Japan, Africa, and the Americas, and from manuscript studies to oral traditions. Students are encouraged to search new vistas of inquiry and stretch themselves intellectually in a supportive and cooperative environment. 

Curriculum requirements for the BA in Music program can be found on the Academic Bulletin.

Opportunities

The Musicology & Ethnomusicology program at Boston University is dedicated to ongoing contribution to the academic music studies. As part of BU School of Music the program has ties to the large performance ensembles as well as to a wide range of other academic departments. In addition, BU is a member of the Boston Consortium, a group of universities where students can cross-register for courses.

Center for early music studies

The Center for Early Music Studies at Boston University (CEMS) is dedicated to the cultivation and dissemination of performance, scholarship, and new pedagogical practices involving music of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods.

Beethoven Center for research

The Beethoven Center for Research promotes scholarship in a wide spectrum of Beethoven studies, with a focus on analysis and criticism, sketch and autograph studies, biography, and historical and cultural contexts.

Musicology & Ethnomusicology Faculty

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  Michael Birenbaum Quintero

  Associate Professor of Music; Chair, Musicology & Ethnomusicology Department

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  Victor Coelho

  Professor of Music; Director, Center for Early Music Studies; Chair, Department of Historical Performance

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  Brita Heimarck

  Associate Professor of Music

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  Gregory Melchor-Barz

  Professor of Ethnomusicology

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  Andrew Shenton

  Professor, Musicology and Ethnomusicology; James R. Houghton Scholar of Sacred Music (School of Theology)

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  Jeremy Yudkin

  Professor of Music; Co-Director of the Center for Beethoven Studies